We credit the school where a player completed their final year of eligibility — not necessarily where they spent most of their college career. This is consistent with how the NFL and major draft databases record college affiliations.
In practical terms, this means that players who transfer are credited to their last school, not their original one. For example, if a player spent three years at School A and one year at School B before being drafted, School B receives credit for the pick.
This approach reflects the standard used by Pro Football Reference, which is our primary data source, and ensures our numbers are verifiable and consistent across all schools.
The NFL has occasionally held supplemental drafts outside of the regular May draft — typically for players who became eligible after the regular draft deadline due to circumstances like leaving school early, academic issues, or other eligibility changes.
Supplemental picks are included in our database and counted toward a school's total draft picks. They are labeled SUPP wherever a pick number would normally appear, since supplemental picks do not carry a traditional overall pick number.
Notable supplemental picks include Bo Jackson (1986), Bernie Kosar (1985), and more recently Josh Gordon (2012).
Position labels have changed significantly over the 90-year history of the NFL Draft. To make cross-era comparisons meaningful, we group individual position codes into modern position groups. Both the raw position code and the group are available for filtering throughout the site.
| Group | Positions Included | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| QB | QB | Quarterback throughout all eras |
| RB | RB, FB, HB, TB, WB, BB | Halfback (HB) and Tailback (TB) used through 1960s; Wingback (WB) through 1974; Blocking Back (BB) through 1951 |
| WR | WR, FL, SE | Flanker (FL) and Split End (SE) used 1957-1969 — same role, different alignment names |
| TE | TE | Tight End — introduced as a distinct position around 1949 |
| OL | C, OT, OG, OL, G (1966+), T (1966+) | G and T before 1966 are not grouped — see below |
| DL | DE, DT, NT, DL, MG, DG | Middle Guard (MG) and Defensive Guard (DG) used 1945-1951 |
| LB | LB, ILB, OLB | Inside/Outside LB designations appeared around 2015 |
| DB | DB, CB, S, FS | Generic DB used throughout history; CB became common 1982+; S consolidated from SAF and FS |
| ST | K, P, LS, KR | Special Teams — Long Snapper (LS) appeared as a distinct draft position around 2015 |
Four position codes — B (Back), E (End), G (Guard, pre-1966), and T (Tackle, pre-1966) — are intentionally left ungrouped. Football in the 1930s through mid-1960s was a different game where many players lined up on both sides of the ball. A "Guard" from 1944 could have been an offensive guard, a defensive guard, or both. Forcing these players into a modern offensive or defensive bucket would misrepresent how the game was played. These picks are visible throughout the site but excluded from position group filters.
Our source data (Pro Football Reference) inconsistently used three codes for the Safety position: S, SAF, and FS (Free Safety). SAF appeared sporadically starting in 2024 with no apparent pattern — the same player type was labeled S in prior years.
We standardized all SAF entries to S in our database for consistency. FS is left as-is since it carries meaningful information about the specific safety role, but both S and FS are grouped together under the DB position group.
A small number of draft picks in our database have no college affiliation. These fall into two categories:
No college: A handful of players across the draft's history — primarily in the very early years — were drafted without attending college at all. There is exactly one such player in our modern dataset.
International Player Pathway Program (IPPP): The NFL's IPPP brings international players — primarily from Australia, Germany, and other countries with developing American football programs — into the league without the traditional college route. These players are tracked separately in our database and are not attributed to any school.
Our draft data is compiled from multiple publicly available sports reference sources, covering NFL Drafts from 1936 through 2025 — 26,900+ picks in total. School assignments were verified and corrected using multiple sources where discrepancies existed. Position grouping, supplemental draft flags, and school matching are our own additions built on top of that base data.
We do not include AFL drafts (1960-1969). During that period, players were often drafted by both an NFL team and an AFL team simultaneously. Including AFL picks would artificially inflate school totals and would make it impossible to compare schools from that era to schools in the one-league era. Our counts reflect NFL drafts only, plus NFL supplemental drafts.
When schools are ranked by number of draft picks or any other metric, ties are displayed using dense ranking — all tied schools share the same rank number, and the next rank skips accordingly. For example, if three schools are tied for 1st with 25 quarterbacks drafted, all three show as 1T and the next school is ranked 4th. This is consistent with standard sports ranking conventions.